A vintage Bill Cosby relic at Friends of Library Spring Book Sale

Planners of the annual Spring Book Sale of the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library (at Fort Mason Festival Pavilion, April 1-5), found themselves with a ripped-from-the-headlines treasure: A copy of the children’s book “My Big Lie” by Bill Cosby.

The online plot summary: “Little Bill gets in big trouble when he tells a fib to explain why he has come home late for dinner.” But this would snazz up any bookshelf, and since children’s books are intended to spur imagination, one might imagine all sorts of plots.

The member preview for the sale is on March 31, and on April 4, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., there’s a party to celebrate the completion of the Friends’ Neighborhood Library Campaign.

Having read in The Chronicle about all the events and exhibitions around town marking the 100th anniversary of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, Ken Lindahl wrote “of a real treasure from the PPIE that is not getting much press: The Festival Organ.”

Austin Opus 500, a 40-ton, 6,000-pipe organ built in Connecticut for the exposition, was the seventh largest in the world. Daily noontime concerts were sold out. After the fair, the instrument was donated to the city of San Francisco, and the Austin Opus 500 was relocated to the Civic Auditorium. Hardly used, it fell into disrepair, and, adding injury to insult, was seemingly mortally damaged by the earthquake of 1989.

But organ aficionados were unwilling to declare the instrument dead. With the help of FEMA funds, it was shipped back to Connecticut for restoration, then returned to San Francisco for more restoration, and then (in the mid-1990s) put into storage in Brooks Hall, a cellar that has wound up being an attic to the city.

Among the plans floated over the years is the installation of the grand organ outdoors along the Embarcadero. “It’s something we’re going to be very proud of,” Willie Brown told the San Francisco Weekly. Outraged organ lovers who said the instrument wasn’t meant to be played outdoors were among the strong opponents of the project, and it never got done.

The city wants the organ out of Brooks Hall, e-mailed Lindahl, and “unless a new home can be found for it, it will likely be lost forever.” There’s more information at the Friends of the Exposition website: www.expositionorgan.org.

Robert Greenberg sends word that the Berkeley condo at 2603 Benvenue Ave. from which Patty Hearst was kidnapped in 1974 is up for sale for $599,000. The listing describes “unique quiet privacy” but does not mention the property’s history.

At the Roxie on Wednesday night, scholar and film critic David Thomson, whose new book is “Why Acting Matters,” talked about acting, introduced “The Missouri Breaks,” a film that provided a tutorial on the subject (Marlon Brando “running amok,” said Thomson), and then took questions from the audience.

Thomson began by describing his own way of speaking his lines. Gore Vidal had once warned him that if he spoke to Americans in the way he thought was ideal — that is correctly, grammatically, with fluidity and most of all meaning — “after about three sentences, a large number of people will think you have sinister designs on their republic, because you are threatening their heartfelt way of life.”

In the first 20 years of the Oscars, nine best actor winners were born and trained outside the United States. Thomson used British actors as examples of acting technique. When Daniel Day-Lewis was making “My Left Foot,” he said, he would answer queries from fellow cast members “in the voice of Christy Brown.” He sat in a wheelchair and expected the crew to lift him when he needed to be moved. Day-Lewis so inhabited his roles that in a theatrical performance of “Hamlet,” he had to leave the stage one night when emotion overcame him, and he broke down in tears. He has never appeared onstage since.

On the other hand, said Thomson, Harold Pinter described John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson talking backstage before a performance of his then-new play, “No Man’s Land.” They were discussing what they’d eaten for lunch. To these pros, preparing for a part, said Pinter, was “so much bull—.” (The Dover sole was quite good.)